Trendnet TEW-692GR Dual Band Wireless Router

Small and fast, but lacking a few features

Lacks the common features we expect yet offers very good wireless speeds

For

Good wireless speeds

Fairly easy to setup

Small form factor

Dual-band signal

Against

No built-in modem

No USB ports

The Trendnet TEW-692GR Dual Band Wireless Router is a small and unobtrusive device that comes with three antennae to deliver a stronger - and wider - wireless signal.

At the back are four Gigabit Ethernet ports and a WAN port for connecting your modem. The lack of a built-in modem means that you're going to have to sit this alongside your existing one. This isn't too much of a show stopper as, we've already mentioned, the TEW-692GR is small, but considering you can get integrated modem routers for around the same price, it's quite a big omission.

Another feature noticeable by its absence is the lack of USB ports. In other routers these are useful for sharing USB drives and printers across networked computers.

On a more positive note; this router is dual-band, broadcasting on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands and avoiding congestion in places where there are a lot of wireless networks. Installation isn't as user-friendly as with the D-Link Wireless N PowerLine Gigabit Router DHP-1565.

Where D-Link provides a step-by-step walkthrough on its DVD, Trendnet has supplied a PDF with a quick-start guide that instructs you to set up the router via your browser. For many people this won't be too complicated, but not if you've never logged in and changed router settings this way.

Once up and running, the performance was very good: two wirelessly connected PCs transferred a 20MB file at a speed of 24.27Mbps.

The TEW-692GR router, then, leaves out quite a few common features we would expect and can be complicated to set up, but it is the router's wireless speeds that impressed us.

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